Wednesday, November 9, 2016

why Trump won: the uneducated rural white voter theory

"The question was: What could the Republican Party, the natural home for that constituency, do to bring them back into the electorate?

We know the answer now, and it reflects horribly on the party and their new voters. What it took was a campaign of undisguised white nationalism—brash, unapologetic scapegoating of immigrants and Muslims. It took not only misogyny, but the endorsement of sexual assault. And it took Republicans who recognized their candidate's recklessness, ignorance, and racism to decide that closing ranks around him was worth all of the dangers they knew they were inviting into the world, if it meant reclaiming political power. "

What this means to President Obama's legacy:

"Republicans are going to do incredible violence to President Barack Obama's accomplishments. The bookend to his remarkable political story will be that he is replaced in the White House by a man who tried to delegitimize him as leader of the birther movement. Trump will almost certainly abrogate Obama's international climate agreement and the global powers agreement preventing Iran from creating their own nuclear arsenal. Republicans will send Trump legislation undermining Obama's legacy everywhere they can find congressional majorities to do so, and Trump will sign those bills. Republicans don't know how to repeal Obamacare, let alone replace it. But they will try.

The Supreme Court will return to conservative control, and over the next four years, it may very well become far more conservative. Voting rights will be further weakened; the constitutional right to abortion is vulnerable to abolition.

Remember, sitting members of the Republican Senate conference, when they were running against Trump in the GOP presidential primary, warned that he could not be trusted with control over the U.S. nuclear arsenal. They said he was an amoral conman. They were right about all of that. Then they endorsed him. We don't know what will happen to the global order; we don't know how Trump will respond to perceived slights by foreign leaders, whether in allied countries, or hostile ones."